Towns
by coolcat12345
Summary: Thoughts of characters concerning their hometowns, and concept of community. Yoh,Lyserg,Horohoro,Jeanne,Anna,Hao


Yoh can't imagine better place on Earth than Funbari. He isn't really sure that even Heaven can compare. He would bet it couldn't.

On it's own, Tokyo is a pretty impressive city. It is giant and sprawling, with buildings grander than any tower from legends that almost seems to reach towards the stars. Millions of people, going on with their lives-mundane or not- and somehow they are all connected.

Funbari isn't in stunning parts of Tokyo. In fact, you could even say it is boring, hidden away on outskirts. But Yoh loves it. Loves trees and cemetery and small sweet shops and quiet neighborhoods and even school. He was born in Izumo, but Tokyo is his home.

All cities are amazing-how could they not be? So many people living together, sharing same space and air, their homes so near each other, their lives bound together. But everybody has their city, one whose name brings warmth to heart. And Yoh's is Tokyo.

No other place in world has Anna and Manta, Amidamaru and Hana.

Lyserg's soul belongs to London, and London belongs to him. He is detective, investigator, dowser.

It is his job and birthright to walk through shadows and lies, to seek truth and secrets on both streets and in homes.

It is an ancient city, and centuries of tradition and ghosts lay over each other, like layers of skin. It is his job, his duty, his blood to travel and document all he can.

He will never uncover them all. No lone person can. City is too wide, too massive, too many streets and secrets. And it is always growing, with each new life. But it doesn't bother him.

If you peel off every layer, you are left with nothing.

Horohoro has traveled over good part of world. He had seen capitols and grand cities. He had seen hidden villages and mythic, sunken kingdoms. He had even seen otherworld. And he would never leave Hokkaido, not for anything in any world.

As young, he hated and loved it. Hated people there, laughing at him for so many reasons- because he was Ainu, because he could see strange thing, because he cared for plants, because he would talk to air, because he had blue hair. But he loved it's sky and soil and snow, loved shops and food and games, loved few friends he made.

But only when he left for Shaman Fight, for grand Tokyo and wide Atlantic and distant America, did he realize how much he loved Hokkaido. He seemed to remember every detail, every cobble on street, every stranger. And he missed it as much as he wanted to be Shaman King.

When everything ended, he could have gone everywhere, became anybody. But he went back home, became "simple" farmer, doing everything in his power to save coltsfoot fields alongside his family.

His home isn't perfect, but it doesn't need to be.

Anna doesn't remember her hometown, for all that it is such important part of basic itako spell. She doesn't know whether she has sibling, and concerning her parents she remembers... well, not faces, but expressions (wariness and confusion) and feelings (fear and disgusts).

That is fine by her. What need has she of memories of people that abandoned her? If she could, she would never return to Shimokita. It is foolish, and irresponsible, but memories bury her like avalanche until she chokes on grief.

She could never understand concept of home, of town that is part of your soul, but if it existed, Shimokita certainly isn't it, for all that Osorezan shaped her.

Now, travelling over world with Yoh, seeing hundred different but same stories playing out in thousand towns and villages, she finally understands. She thinks of Tokyo, and Funbari, and her soaps, and Ryo and Manta and Tamao and Hana and goes on.

She can't stop, for her onsen isn't yet most famous in Japan.

For sake of Paris, Jeanne would die. Not the Iron Maiden, who must bleed and endure and bring justice to darkness, but Jeanne, little girl fond of sweet cakes and puffy dresses.

She loves every aspect of her city. From dirty slums where charity is needed to glamorous halls from which it should-no,must-be given. She loves her home, and she loves orphanage where she was found, and she loves shining restaurants and X-Laws's storages of weapons and Paris's magnificent, breath-taking churches.

God made man in His image-a creature of stunning intellect, endless charity and uncontainable imagination. Towns, villages, communities-they are epitomes of His gifts, fortresses of kindness, order and law.

It may be selfish, and stupid, and selfish, but she would dare say Paris is greatest of them all. The city of light, kingdom of art and science, bastion of freedom and virtue. It may be blasphemy, and so she prays for forgivness if that is case.

But to her, the whole city is the temple, holiest of them all after Jerusalem.

Hao snarls and bites his cheek and spits, one hand holding on rough, vandalised wall, other curled in fist, lego gauntlets hitting bricks, breaking paint, carving his name in alley. Just why would anybody live in something as ridiculous as town, with it's buildings and streests and poisoned air and tainted rivers and starved animals and humans and people and million horrible thoughts and oh Heavens how are they even breathing?

He spent nine centuries in Hell, and he can say with certainty that any human dwelling is far worse. He couldn't stand even Patch village, with all of shamans and Great Spirits presence. Even less could he stand palaces of Imperial Court, full of greed and treachery and selfish nobles, just as he couldn't stand streets, cold and starvation and fools that do nothing. It is wonder he doesn't shatter and destroy all of this (of course not, he has excellent self control, but watching those concrete skyscrapers melt would be such lovely sight...).

Forests and deserts and volcanoes and icy wastes and seas and what more could you need? If you couldn't stand open sky there were always crowns of trees and caves and you could make shelters... But then, he lived on the edge of village, and he and his mother were demons and foxes and could walk in and out of dark woods and he was born there, between roots and branches, so she once told him, tired and sad and unaware and half asleep. Wolf for midwife, bird for doctor, demon for nurse, kodama for guardian, fox for mother.

But this abomination, this monstrosity, this city is still part of earth. Trapped and crying and inert, but living and eternal and hateful. Walls and steel and glass remember being stone and ore and sand. Hao feels ground hum, and smiles, caressing the walls, as mother earth grips his heart and soul and roars with hatred, demanding justice and retribution from only one who can hear her venomous words. Buildings crumble and shatter. Dust and soil are eternal. Earth is broken and betrayed, tormented and fractured, and yet...

There are flowers, growing despite asphalt.


End file.
